REMARKS OF ADMIRAL BOBBY INMAN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE BEFORE 96TH ANNUAL CONVENTION OF AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00901R000500290002-3
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 24
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 9, 2001
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: April 27, 1982
• Content Type: SPEECH

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REMARKS OF ADMIRAL BOBBY INMAN
DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
before
96th ANNUAL CONVENTION
of
AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION
Fairmont Hotel
San Francisco, California
27 April 1982
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Speech by Admiral Bobby Inman
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ADMIRAL BOBBY INMAN: Several months ago, when Mrs.
Graham called, with Tom Johnson, the office and twisted my arm in
the style you all are familiar with to accept an invitation, I
stopped to consult with [unintelligible] Oswald (?), the Agency's
Director of External Affairs, who thought that even though we
were trying to keep a low profile, that this was a group
certainly worth talking to and trying to convey some views.
When the program eventually came and I saw I was doing a
breakfast meeting on a Tuesday morning, I had some concern about
whether there would be a turnout to show any interest in what I
had to say. But there was some sense that one ought to whip up
some attention from the crowd. Ithink we overdid it a little in
the activities of the last week.-
I'm going to wonder for you for the next 20 minutes or
so through what I hope won't come across as a pedantic exercise
in talking bout how we got the current intelligence community we
have and where I think it ought to go. But there are several
sort of basic ground rules you need to understand as we address
the U.S. intelligence community and for sorting out what you
think we ought to do, what you can support, and where you have,
some reservations. And the first basic ground rule is that you
need to think of three basic functions that are performed by the
U.S. intelligence community.
The overwhelmingly large is the foreign -- large one is
the foreign intelligence capability. What's going on in other
countries, other organizations that may be of direct relevance or
interest to this country as it goes about its business.
The second is the counterintelligence question. How
does one understand and counter efforts by foreign intelligence
organizations to learn this country's secrets.
And the third is covert action. Using less than
military force, more than diplomacy to try to affect the actions
or outcomes of other nations.
We often confuse those, both in looking at the
criticisms leveled in the past and trying to chart out what we
ought to do in the future.
What is the state of U.S. intelligence today? In my
view, for the problems that we're going to face in the late '80s
and the '90s, I would tell you it's marginal. And what I will be
discussing this morning is why it got in the condition it's in
and where I believe we need to go.
And the first point to underline is that when this great
republic was founded, we had little concern about what was
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happening in the outside world. In fact, there's a good
isolationist trend that goes right from the outset. And so we
established many great institutions of government -- the First
Amendment, which Mrs. Graham spoke to eloquently yesterday -- but
we didn't have any concern about the need to collect information
on foreign countries or to protect that information. In fact, if
you look back at the historical record, standardly, we've created
intelligence collection, analysis, reporting capabilities in
wartime, and then we've dismantled them as rapidly as we could
when peace came along.
It was not until 1882 that we created the first
permanent peacetime intelligence organization, the Office of
Naval Intelligence, 23 March 1882. We hadn't laid down any ships
in 17 years, and there were some-bright people who persuaded the
Secretary of the Navy that unless we,-could get the country
focused on the threat outside, we'd never start rebuilding a
fleet.
Through World War I, we again followed the usual pattern
of building up capabilities. And we moved into the electronic
age for the first time with a substantial communications
intelligence effort. That was sustained after the war for a
while in the State Department, until 1929, when a new Deputy
Secretary of State examined it, said, "Gentlemen don't read other
gentlemen's mail," and disestablished the capability.
Small residual elements were picked up by the War
Department and the Navy, and that was the nucleus of the effort
that broke the Japanese code in the days before the war. But we
had no organized way to flow the results, to analyze it, to
discuss it with policymakers to make sure it was in the hands of
those who need it.
Out of the World War II experience came a totally
different approach toward this country's needs for intelligence.
And the leaders who had experienced too often the shortfalls in
the start of the war were persuaded that we ought to create, in
peacetime, the institutions that would provide this country the
quality of intelligence it needed.
There was another underlying fabric out of that World
War II time, collaboration with our allies. And, in fact, many
of the approaches to how we would structure intelligence
organizations came out of those very close working relationships
in World War II.
We also had, through our OSS experience, the first
outreach toward what would come to be known as covert action.
When the new organizations were put together in the
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late '40s and when the infusion of money and people began, there
was, I believe, one major shortfall. We provided no guidelines
to those who were creating the agencies and those who were going
to work in them of the standards of conduct to which they would
be held accountable in the future. They were simply told there
was a mission, and go accomplish the mission, and no clear
guidelines of what 25 years later would be the standard to which
one would examine their performance.
The '50s were a time of-great investment in U.S.
intelligence capabilities. The overriding question was what
might this country need to know. We moved to create an
encyclopedic knowledge about all the countries around the world.
But you'll remember, in those.days there were far fewer
countries. Many colonial entities still existed.
The investment in technology produced U-2 and the first
chance to begin collecting intelligence on denied areas in ways
that had never been possible before. We also had some
experiments with covert action: '53 in Iran, '54 in Guatemala.
We also had an event in the late 1950s that impacted
pretty heavily on the organization and structure of the
intelligence community for some years thereafter. That was the
so-called missile gap;. There have been many allegations about
the twisting of intelligence to fit preconceived notions or to
sell budgets. That's the one that you can document where the use
of footnotes was the instrument through which a public debate was
shaped to create the impression of a missile gap.
As we moved into the '60s, the Defense Intelligence
Agency was created, largely to deal with that problem. It is
also a classic study about how not to go about creating
organizations. Sixty percent of the billets from the service
intelligence organizations were pulled together in a central
organization, and then the services were told to send the 60
percent of the people they would prefer to send to fill those
slots. And DIA picked up right at the outset some quality
problems that have continued to bedevil them to this point in
time. Not ineffective, but rather simply not having the absolute
top quality that they needed from the outset to compete
effectively with the other organizations.
Instead of asking what might we need to know, suddenly
the intelligence community, like the rest of the Defense
Department, was caught up with the question, is it
cost-effective? And if there was ever a livelihood that was
unlikely to be cost-effective, it is this one.
On the covert action side, the Bay of Pigs, Laos, early
South Vietnam. When the,war in South Vietnam began to spread,
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instead of adding manpower to do the in-depth intelligence job
that was required, assets were diverted, diverted away from
keeping the encylopedic data base on all parts of the world. And
you'll recall that's the time when many countries were becoming
independent. So at a time when our interest in doing encylopedic
collection, reporting [unintelligible] should have been going up,
we diverted away from it.
That got an extra shot in the arm in 1967 with something
you'll recall as the.balance of payments exercise. And we began
asking, how can we draw down American presence abroad? It didn't
just hit the formal intelligence-community entities; it also hit
very hard the State Department. And., it was the beginning of
drawing down political, economic reporters from many parts of the
world.
In the early 1970s that drawdown picked up steam with
Vietnamization. And the primary question became, what can you do
without? Budgets were predetermined, and then you tried to fit
the requirement that you could satisfy within that predetermined
ceiling.
The decision was made to take advantage of new
technology, satellites; not by adding money, but by giving up
manpower and using the manpower dollars to buy the access.
In 1973, as a penalty for failure to predict the
October war, there was a further 25 percent slash in manpower
across all those entities which come under the Department of
Defense.
The primary focus in the '70s was on the capability to
verify treaties. And as you well know, we then got into the long
period of examination of the mistakes made in the previous 30
years, with revelations and the investigations by the
congressional committees.
That's not all bad news, because out of that process
came some new institutions and some new approaches. In 1976, for
the first time, we were provided guidelines. There will be those
who argue they were overrestrictive. That's not unusuall for a
first time to apply guidelines. But it was a conscious effort to
tell the professionals inside the intelligence organizations the
standards to which they would be held accountable 10, 20, 30
years later for the decisions which they would undertake,
primarily dealing with protection of the rights of American
citizens.
We also got out of that period of the congressional
investigations two new institutions, the permanent select
committees in the Senate and the House, established in peacetime
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with the mechanisms to fully protect intelligence collection,
processing, reporting secrets, but in a way that would permit the
most thorough and detailed oversight. They also had another
purpose. By becoming knowledgeable in great detail of the
country's intelligence capabilities, they became advocates, as
they began to recognize the extent to which we had drawn down our
total capabilities.
As you will recognize, I'm edging my way around a lot of
classified data and a.lot of classified figures, because the
manpower and budget figures have always been classified; and, by
agreement of the Executive and Congressional Branches, they
remain so. But from the plateau in 1964, before the small adds
in the tactical forces to deal with Vietnam, to the low point in
the late '70s, we drew down 40 percent of the manpower that we
devoted to this intelligence arena, at a point in time when th.e
world was not turning out to be the peaceful place, with primary
concentration on treaty verification and detente that had been
hoped a decade earlier.
In 1976, in the wake of the Soviet move into -- with
proxy forces and equipment into Angola and some fumbling U.S.
efforts to respond through covert action, we got the Clark
Amendment, which precluded the use of covert action in that
operation. One can debate a long time the wisdom of that action,
the action on the U.S. to.undertake it, the signal sent to the
Soviets and the Cubans when we declared by law that we would not
use the process. But what is not debatable is that in the wake
of that, in the climate of saying what can we do without, the
country dismantled the majority of its covert action
.capabilities.
Finally, when one considers the impact of this long
drawdown of intelligence, one also must consider the impact of
the psychology of leaks, which began in full cry in the
Vietnamese conflict, when it became the heroic thing to do to
leak something that would show your opposition, and it continues
unabated to this point in time, with recurrent examples, to the
dismay of the professionals inside, of leaks that simply don't
convey information, but convey how we know it. And the
adversaries, who operate against the most open society in the
world, find it very easy to plug our access into the most closed
society in the world.
By 1980, those two congressional committees that had
spent a substantial period of time examining the state of U.S.
intelligence began to push on the Administration the need to
rebuild. They were offering manpower and dollar adds well before
the Executive Branch was prepared to accept them. The climate
already existed in the Congress, among the knowledgeable members
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of select committees and the appropriation subcommittees, on the
long-term need to rebuild.
Where do we stand in Inman's report card in the early
1980s? Those systems purchased to verify treaties also have
great capabilities to provide indications and warning. So I
would tell you, in my view, the country's intelligence, and
warning capabilities against a surprise attack from our principal
adversary are better than they have ever been. And I simply
reject out of hand the likelihood that we could be surprised with
a Pearl Harbor kind of attack of any substantial size. And the
same pretty well holds true for the Eastern Front, Central Front
of Europe, save for conditions when one has a very, very long
period of bad weather.
We do well in following. the military developments, the
order of battle, the equipping, the state of training and
readiness or our principal adversaries. We do substantially less
well in the political and economic areas. And that, in my
judgment, is a factor -- there are two factors which drive that.
--
One is simply the limited resources which have been applied
against those problems for a long period of time; and secondly,
the great difficulty in getting access in a closed society to the
actual discussions, the developments, the intentions of the
senior leadership.
As one moves to the basic encyclopedic data base that
ought to serve as the underpinning of all policy development, all
force development, the underlying fabric for the country's
national security and foreign policies, I would tell you we do
very poorly. Again, largely, in my view, for lack of application
of resources against many parts of the world. And we increased
in that long period of drawdown our reliance on our allies to
provide us information on many of the areas that we were no
longer going to devote direct attention ourselves.
Where do we need to go? We have spent a great deal of
time over the past year in trying to look out at the issues that
this country is going to have to face in the 1985-1990 time
frame, and then to assess the capability of the U.S. intelligence
community now, not only against what it's already been charged to
do, but against that range of issues, to assess what was already
in the programs and what ought to be done. And the long-range
rebuilding program has been approved. It is in the process of
being endorsed by the Congress. And while we may have some
arguments about relative priorities and whether we take seven
years as opposed to five to do the rebuilding, I am persuaded
that there is support in the Congress and in the Administration
to see through this long-range rebuilding. I am also persuaded
that one can do that and can provide this country the quality of
intelligence that it needs, through a process of laws and, where
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one does not have laws, by executive order, to insure that one
provides for the protection of the rights of American citizens.
It does make the job harder sometimes, just in simple
things like background investigations. But usually those are
questions where additional manpower will let you do the job that
needs to be done, while still abiding by the law.
In the process of collecting information from abroad,we
don't need a lot of redundancy. There, you want donmana a the be
collection to it as efficiently as you can.
stuck with a single source, and so you want always to aim toward
trying to have a human source, an electronic source, or a
photograph, at least two of the three; else you're very likely
either not to understand the significance of what you see, or..?
simply to be confused or misled.
'When it turns to analysis, there you want redundancy.
Others may call it duplication. But as a national priority, we
ought to insist upon competitive analysis, because intelligence
is a very large mosaic made up of bits and pieces of information.
It's very rare when you get the actual manual or document that
tells you what another country is going to do in great detail.
And the assumptions that the analyst brings as he or she examines
those bits and pieces of information makes a great deal of
difference in their judgment about what's going to actually occur
or what they're even seeing. And therefore we should, as a
national priority, always look, whether it's -- and we have a
great deal of competition in analysis of military intelligence
matters. That's probably the healthiest part of our intelligence
capabilities. We need to look to build our basic political and
economic analytical capabilities and to insure that there is
competition of views from at least two different departments.
I hope we've also made some headway in the last year in
insuring that what we're focusing on in the order of priority o i farelevant to the problems that this country's going
decade out ahead. As you know from watching the rest of
government, it's not easy to move people from what, they've been
doing for 20 years as the world changes. Now, the question
becomes, what is your view of how the world is changing?
If you believe that the country's primary problem in the
decade out ahead of us is going to be dealing with the Soviet
Union on the Eurasian continent, looking across the Central Front
of Europe, then you can relax about the current capabilities of
the U.S. intelligence community and where it needs to go. If you
happen to share my view that we're much more likely to find this
decade one of great difficulties in competition for raw
materials, natural resources, markets, dealing with instability
in many areas of the world, trying to cope with fervor of
religious movements, then we have a very long way to go, and need
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your strong support in sustaining the rebuilding of the U.S.
intelligence community. And we must come to grips witht he very
difficult issue of secrecy to protect the investment that we make
in our ability to collect, to process, and to report on foreign
intelligence.
That will not be easy. There is a start already in
something that's called an identities bill. There are proposals
on the floor for consideration of amendments to the Freedom of
Information Act that would take us back to the stage prior to
1974. Those will help. I can't guaranty to you that they will
do the job entirely, because we're still caught with this
psychology of leaks.
One can tell a story of what's happening in a foreign
event with care without in fact damaging the country's
intelligence capabilities. But it's far more difficult when the
urge is there to describe how we knew. And in that instance,
it's almost impossible to do it without damaging the country's
intelligence capabilities.
Now, without belaboring it further and to give you at
least some time for questions, may I throw the floor open for
questions. You are not limited to the topics that I have
covered, and there are no questions that I consider out of
bounds. But some of the answers might be, so I may be cautious
in how I respond.
DAVID KRASLOW: Admiral, David Kraslow of the Miami
I wonder, sir, how you would reconcile your comments
about redundancy and competiveness in intelligence analyses with
the very difficult problem our government had in the Vietnam War
when you had tremendous, tremendous disparities on estimates of
enemy strength between CIA and DIA, to the point where CIA was
estimating twice the number of enemy forces that DIA was
estimating, and really made it very difficult for our leaders,
particularly the Secretary of Defense, to make recommendations to
the President. And I just wonder if in that kind of system you
don't have a built-in motivation for coming up with the kinds of
answers which would help an agency protect a policy that it has
been advocating.
ADMIRAL INMAN: You always have to be alert to the
dangers you have outlined. There are two or three things,
though, that I think give a more optimistic prospect for the
future. One is substantially improved collection methods and
opportunities than were available in the '60s time frame.
You're never going to reconcile all the differences.
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The key factor is to make sure that the disagreements are clearly
spelled out to the policymaker. And he's always going to have to
make some tough choice. But he needs to know clearly how much.is
assumption, how much are judgments, how much hard fact is there,
and why you end up with different outcomes.
It is not the role of the intelligence community to make
the job of the Secretary of Defense easier. It's their job to
make sure he clearly understands where there are disagreements
and what the options are, from the intelligence point of view, in
trying to narrow the gap.
CHARLES ROWE: I'm Charles Rowe from Fredericksburg.
As you know, Admiral, ANPA has opposed the so-called..
names-of-agents bill, which is now, I guess, in conference
committee. If this bill becomes law, it would make it illegal to
publish information that indentifies and intelligence agent, even
if the information came from a public source.
ADMIRAL INMAN: If the government had the clearance to-
continue to keep that identity secret.
ROWE: Now, do you feel that the intelligence community
gains enough additional protection for covert agents under this
bill to justify what I guess is the first time in the nation's
history to criminalize the publication of public information?
ADMIRAL INMAN: In the '50s, I believe the date, Mr.
Rowe, we enacted 18 U.S. Code 798, which covers communications
intelligence. It requires only two elements: that the
individual knew that it was communications intelligence and that
it was classified, in order to get a prosecution. I think that's
only been used once in the intervening years. But, in fact, we
have better protection for our communications intelligence than
any other element of our intelligence process. Why? In my view,
it's because of the general impact that the legislation is there.
I do not believe there is any high likelihood that one
will need to use the legislation. I'm in hopes it will have the
deterrent effect.
After a long time of looking at the proposals that are
before the Congress, I finally came down preferring the Chafee
Amendment on the pattern, rather than proving the intent, for a
reason that's not necessarily satisfying to all of my colleagues.
But as I look at the goal -- that is, deterrence in publishing
-- I worry, if you have an intent standard, that indeed you will
set in motion the invasion of civil liberties that lies at the
heart of our concern, as the government will set off with all
kinds of intrusive techniques to try to prove intent; and that
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therefore one is far more likely not to set in motion those
intrusive -- use of intrusive technique if one holds to a pattern
of activity.
I'm not a lawyer. So whether there could have been yet
a better way to address -- to develop a law, I defer to the
lawyers. But I do believe the intelligence community gains
substantially, not only in protecting its own sources, but also
in the view sent to our allies, that information which they
provide us which is relevant to their own sources is more likely
to remain secure.
ROWE: I respect your views, Admiral. I would still
feel that what you call the deterrent effect we would call the
chilling effect.
Thank you.
TOM VAIL: Admiral, I'm Tom Vail of the Cleveland Plain
Can you tell us something about your views on the use-of
intelligence in internal domestic matters by our political
friends, and how we prevent them from using them for those
purposes?
ADMIRAL INMAN: I'm not quite sure I understand the
question.
VAIL: Well, you've made some news lately about the use
of intelligence in domestic affairs, which can be used by
politicians. There's been some fear that that be used by
politicians for their own purposes.
ADMIRAL INMAN: There has been some reporting that is a
little garbled over the concerns. Let me see if I can lay out
two or three quick areas that will be responsive to your
question.
First, in drafting Executive Order 12333, the one that
governs the conduct of the agencies in doing, largely, the
foreign intelligence mission, there were those who had the view
that we needed to increase competitive collection and analysis in
the counterintelligence arena; and that one, therefore, should
authorize and divert CIA to provide competition to the FBI as the
way to improve the overall counterintelligence performance.
I did not share that view. I felt very strongly that we
have -- and as you will well know from my 20-25-minute dialogue,
that we have so much to do abroad that we aren't beginning to
addresss satisfactorily now, that to divert those assets and to
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try to create a fabric of competition in counterintelligence was
just absolutely the wrong way to go.
The separate question that parallels is, what kind of
organizational structures do you need, both for the intelligence
community and the foreign intelligence role and on the
counterintelligence side? And again, it will not surprise you,
from what you've heard in the last 20 to 25 minutes, I do not
believe that organizational questions underlie our problems.
It's a resource question.
Ten years ago the FBI.tried to maintain a standard of at
least one agent for every two potential foreign intelligence
collectors from our clearly identified adversary countries. In a
decade in which we were opening up this country to a far greater
presence of the nationals from those countries, we were reducing
the size of the FBI to where it's about a four-to-one ratio now.
And you simply cannot conduct the kind of surveillance necessary
with those odds.
On the question of the use of CIA in the U.S., the -
coverage is probably understandable, but it was very
substantially misleading to the public in both the intent and
where we finally ended up.
In the first weeks of the new Administration, there was
a focus on the question of terrorism and whether or not terrorism
was going to likely have an upsurge in this country, and our
capabilities to deal with it. I made my pitch then that
:resources, dollars and men, were a critical factor in dealing
with all of these problems. But there were some views that
restrictions might well be the primary problem. And so the
question, to at least examine it, was: What restrictions in any
way inhibit the ability of any of the intelligence organizations
to contribute on this potential threat of terrorism in the U.S.?
And ther,e were indeed a lot that impacted on the use of th
agencies that are normally engaged in foreign intelligence
collection.
But circulating that first set of restriction was picked
up as a policy decision. In fact, there had been no policy
review to say, "Yes, you could do those. But do you want to do
them?"
I tried to get out in front of the truck to slow it down
to make sure that policy deliberation took place. I could have
done without the publicity that accompanied it.
The end result, once the senior policymakers examined it
was, no, they didn't want to do that. But nonetheless there
persisted an image that there was a deliberate, conscious effort
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by the senior members of government to involve CIA in domestic
collection activity. It was never -- had never been reviewed to
that point. And when they did review it, it was rejected out of
hand.
So, one does not have to worry that with the departure
of a single individual., suddenly the hordes are going to be
released.
There is a tougher part, and there was an authorization,
and it did cause some unease. But that's dealing with the real
world of the 1980s and the ease and speed with which foreigners
can transit into this country.
And I'll just very quickly finish off with this one, and
then give you back the floor.
In,the days when foreigners came to this country by
ship, it was a very easy matter to pass the word and turn over to
the FBI to pick up surveillance when the ship docked of someone
that you knew was coming to make an agent meet in this country..
But in the days of modern air transportation, when suddenly the
agent -- the suspect heads for Charles de Gaulle and gets on an
airplane, unless you're going to lose the contact, the only
option you have is to put your CIA people on the plane and send
them to the U.S., and then turn over the contact as soon as you
reasonably can do it in an orderly manner. And that is the only
.internal collection activity which was authorized.
MAN: Admiral, just quickly. What's the finest
intelligence organization in the world, in your opinion?
ADMIRAL INMAN: Let me duck that one.
[Laughter]
TOM JOHNSON: Admiral, Tom Johnson, Los Angeles Times.
Could you tell us why you resigned, sir?
ADMIRAL INMAN: When I had reached 28 1/2 years of
service in 1980, late 1980, it was my sense that that was really
a good time to go start a second career.
I made a conscious decision, Tom, 20 years ago to be an
intelligence specialist. I don't regret it at all. It's been an
enormously exciting life as it's gone along. But the nature of
those things is that there's a limit in how far you can go. When
you've become an intelligence specialist, normally the highest
you can aspire to is perhaps two stars, if you're a military
officer. By a great fluke, a little more than that's come alonq
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13
But it's very clear, in a structure where Presidents
select their intelligence officers, as they properly should, and
they want that chief intelligence officer to be someone they know
and understand, and there are not laws or legislations which
would send you in a different direction, one has to anticipate
that, whichever party is there, the Director of Central
Intelligence is going to be someone with the political views of
the U.S. -- of the President himself.
I looked at all that and said it's really time that I
ought to go start a second career.. My arm was twisted severely
to provide help. I'd been complaining for the last four years
that we weren't getting on with trying to shape a long-range
program to rebuild the U.S. intelligence capabilities. And it.
was alittle hard to back away from the offer to at least try''to
shape that. I've done that. And it seemed to me now was the
right time to get off the train and go start a second career.
There were no policy decisions along any major issue
that caused me to resign in protest. There were lots of
disagreements. A fair number of them were solved to my
satisfaction. Not all. But of those that were not, there were
none that were matters of principle.
On the working relationships with Mr. Casey, they've
actually been very good. He's been an amazingly patient man with
a deputy who tends to be very direct and very outspoken in public
and in private on a great many issues. And I could not have
.asked for better support than I've had from him in that process.
But it, frankly, came down that after 30 years, I feel
I've done my service to the country in the public sector. And
maybe I can give some from the private side. But I had lost any
zest that I had for the bureaucratic problems.
I would like all you to assure me that I'm not going to
find those bureaucratic problems in the private sector. But
nonetheless, I'm eager to try.
I realize that we've really run out of time, and no one
really asked the question back. Let me come back to the
controversial topic of the Freedom of Information Act.
[Cassette turned]
ADMIRAL INMAN: ...full exclusion. We've had some very
useful dialogue already from your working committee, Mr. Rowe and
others. And all the professionals I know, and Bill Casey as
well, have been grateful for the efforts that this organization
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14
has put forth to try to understand our views. That's not always
been a frequent occurrence.
It would clearly be easier to administer a full
exclusion. And that would certainly be much more reassuring to
our foreign friends, many of whom are increasingly reluctant
to provide us information which they fear will come into the
public domain. And there are also problems in the cooperation
that we get from friends in this country as well, for fear that
their contacts abroad will be damaged unacceptably if it becomes
clear that they in fact do provide their government helpful
assistance in understanding what's happening abroad.
Once I get out the door on the lst of July, if you were
to ask me, I would tell all of you that I think the Chafee bill
might well be a good compromise that one ought to push hard to
get enacted, in not giving the total exclusion that worries this
organization, but that at least would go a very long way toward
meeting the really urgent requirements of the intelligence
community for some redress in this area.
And I would urge that you'd continue the efforts that.
you've already started of the dialogue. It's one of the more
promising notes that's come to me out of this great world of the
media over these last several years.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to talk with
[Applause]
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NATIONAL SECURITY AND TECHNICAL INFORMATION
by
Admiral B. R. Inman
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
American Association for the
Advancement of Science,
Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
7 January 1982
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This symposium is an appropriate place, I believe, to lay out some
thoughts that all of us--scientists and public servants--should consider.
These thoughts, as well as the ensuing dialogue today and later, will help
us recall how much we have in common and also help us remember that national
security and scientific interests can best be advanced through a joint effort.
The fact is that we do have a substantial amount of common ground and experi-
ence--both in our separate fields, and in our joint work, to protect this
nation and to further science.
Throughout the world today, every nation's progress and security are
tied up with science and technology. Some would say that fact is a curse
of the modern age; others would say it is our salvation. Technical information
has given us the means to destroy civilization or, at least, revert it to the.
Dark Ages. At the same time, science and technology have made life safer and
bountiful, given us tools to understand better the universe in which we live,
and provided the weapons and intelligence systems to help us.defend our
nation.
There is an overlap between technical information and national security
which inevitably produces tension. This tension results from the scientist's
desire for unconstrained research and publication, on the one hand, and the
federal government's need to protect certain information from potential
foreign adversaries who might use that information against this nation. Both
..are powerful forces, thus it should not be a surprise that-finding a workable
and just balance between them is quite difficult. But finding this balance
is essential, for we must simultaneously protect the' nation and protect the
individual rights of scientists--both as academicians and citizens-
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This tension is accentuated when scientists are employed by the federal
government directly, or work for the government indirectly in their own
offices with federal research funds. Some of this work is done on subjects
which directly affect the nation's security--e.g., its defense, diplomacy,
and intelligence efforts. The federal government has always conducted these
activities on behalf of our society for several reasons. It is far more
convenient for the federal government to provide for the common good.
Irreversible and significant harm--to the nation as a whole, and to its
citizens--often is threatened and this fact is a stimulus for the federal
government to act.
There are cases where interplay has occurred between science and the
national security interests. One of the most obvious, of course, is the
Manhattan Project of World War II in which the first nuclear weapons were
created and tested. Another is the development of "national technical means"
to monitor foreign compliance with international arms control accords. Science
and national security have a symbiotic relationship--each benefitting from the
interests, concerns, and contributions of the other. In light of the long
.history of that relationship, the suggestion is hollow that science might
(or should somehow) be kept apart from national security concerns, or that
national security concerns should not have an impact on "scientific freedom."
The need in today's world for protection of some information, for secrecy
is clear--I believe--to any fair observer. Protection of the information
necessary,to safeguard our society,'and to conduct our international affairs,
must 'occur. '-Withi n -the':federal government; there is - a system established by
Executive Order to assess the expected damage, should certain information come
into the hands of foreign enemies, and--based on that assessment--to control
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access to that information so as to prevent any such exposure. This exposure
potentially could occur through public release of the data, or from the
successful clandestine activities of the agents of foreign intelligence
services.
And we should make no mistake, foreign intelligence services--among
other entities of foreign governments--are collecting all types of information
in the U.S. Specific data on technical subjects is high on the wanted list
of every major foreign intelligence service and for good reason. The U.S.
is a leader in many--if not most--technical areas, and technical data can
enhance a nation's international strength. In terms of harm to the national
interest, it makes little difference whether the data is copied from technical
journals in a library or given away by a member of our society to an agent of
a foreign power.
A different source of tension arises when scientists, completely separate
from the federal government, conduct research in areas where the federal
government has an obvious and preeminent role for society as a whole. One
example is the design of advanced weapons, especially nuclear ones. Another
is cryptography. While nuclear weapons and cryptography are heavily dependent
on theoretical mathematics, there is no public business market for nuclear
weapons. Such a market, however, does exist for cryptographic concepts and
gear to protect certain types of business communications.
Research into cryptography is an area of special, long-standing concern
to When I was' 'Director of the National Security Agency, I 'started--a
diaTdgue`to fiiid' a common ground=regardiirg cryptography between- scientific==
freedom and national security. Considerable effort has gone into that dialogue,
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by both scientists and public servants, and I think the results so far have
been reasonable and fair. Cryptologic research in the business and academic
arenas, no matter how useful, remains redundant to the necessary efforts of
the federal government to protect its own communications. I still am concerned
that indiscriminate publication of the results of that research will come
to the attention of foreign governments and entities and, thereby, could cause
irreversible and unnecessary harm to U.S. national security interests.
There are, in addition, other fields where publication of certain technical
information could affect the national security in a harmful way. Examples
include computer hardware and software, other electronic gear and techniques.
lasers, crop projections, and manufacturing procedures.
I think it should also be pointed out that scientists' blanket claims of
scientific freedom are somewhat disingenuous in light of the arrangements that
academicians routinely make with private, corporate sources of funding. For
example, academicians do not seem to have any serious difficulty with restrictions
on publications that arise from a corporate concern for trade secret protection.
The strong negative reaction from some scientists, over the issue of protecting
certain technical information for national security reasons, seems to be based
largely on the fact that the federal government, rather than. a corporation, is
the source of the restriction. Yet this would presume that the corporate,
commercial interests somehow rise to a higher level than do national security
concerns. I could not disagree more strongly.
'Scientists have seYVed our society specand engineers tacul.arly;.in peace
and war Key features